"Hit to Kill is the best book yet available on the current debate on missile defense. It's comprehensive, accurate, and totally objective. Everyone involved in this ongoing debate should read it" -- William Perry, former Secretary of Defense

Veteran Washington Post military and foreign affairs correspondent, Bradley Graham, will discuss and sign copies of his new book, Hit to Kill: The New Battle over Shielding America from Missile Attack (Public Affairs, November 2001) at noon on Wednesday, January 16 in the Corwin Pavilion. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of Hit to Kill will be available for purchase and signing at this free, public event.

The new Bush administration has wasted no time in making national missile defense the centerpiece of its national security policy and is expected to move forward with testing and eventual deployment of a system to destroy incoming missiles in flight--even though the Russians, the Chinese, and our own European allies have expressed alarm at such action. The system's defenders say that we must press forward if America is to be secure against nuclear, biological, and chemical threats in the decades to come. There's only one problem: No one has ever shown that such a system would actually work.

In Hit to Kill, Bradley Graham, a longtime military and foreign affairs correspondent for The Washington Post, tells the behind-the-scenes story of how national missile defense--once considered a discredited relic of the Cold War--was revived during the 1990s to address an emerging Third World missile threat. Graham recounts the political battles surrounding national missile defense during the Clinton administration and the technological trials and tribulations of the major defense firms involved in the project. He reports on the experts who have mobilized in the last year to question the system's feasibility and examines the scientific evidence for and against it.  Over the past half century, no proposed weapons system has drawn more argument or more dollars than national missile defense, and Graham explores the reasons for the enduring debate and the costs to the nation of having failed to resolve it.

Bradley Graham has spent more than twenty years working for The Washington Post in various reporting and editing assignments focused on foreign and military affairs. Most recently, he completed a six-year stint covering the Pentagon.

This event is part of the "Global Peace, Security, and Human Rights" lecture series being sponsored by the UC Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation, UCSB Arts & Lectures, Global and International Studies Program, Global Peace and Security Program and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. It is being put on in partnership with the Santa Barbara Committee on Foreign Relations, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, PAX 2100, International Studies Association at Santa Barbara City College, and the International Studies Program at Ventura College.